


Find Another Place

by Kangofu_CB



Series: Float On [2]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: But with a happy ending, M/M, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 22:52:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB
Summary: Heero's perspective on Duo and the changes he's gone through.





	Find Another Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luvsanime02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvsanime02/gifts).



> This is a continuation of 'The World At Large' and I strongly suggest you read that first.
> 
> A gift for Ro, because reasons.

_I know that starting over's not what life's about_

_But my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth_

Modest Mouse

* * *

 

 

Heero hadn’t been expecting Duo, per se, when he’d shown up in Delhi, but he’d been expecting _someone_.  

 

He’d known for months that someone was tracking his IP.  Suspected it was his online ‘friend’ on the travel blog, who seemed harmless enough, if somewhat sad and lonely.  Had calculated the risk and deemed it negligible.  Even if they traced his IP address, there were very few people on Earth or in space who could catch Heero Yuy out, even now.  Too many years of training, high alert and near-indestructibility had etched him permanently into a particular kind of man.  The kind who didn’t let his skills lapse, even if he hadn’t laid hands on a weapon in nearly a decade.

 

It had still been a surprise for the familiar face of his wartime comrade to appear across the table from him, thousands of miles from where he’d left him - left everyone - behind in Brussels.

 

Heero couldn’t bring himself to regret the decision to leave the fledgling government to itself.   He’d spent the year between the Eve Wars and the Barton Incident obsessively monitoring the various criminal networks, government oversight committees, and newsreels, looking for any sign, however slight, that the peace he’d bought and paid for in blood and sweat and tears was showing any sign of breakage.

 

It had been exhausting.

 

And ineffective, as Dekim Barton proved.

 

So after he got out of the hospital, he said goodbye to his few friends, namely the pilots, and disappeared.

 

He didn’t regret leaving.

 

But looking at Duo’s worn face, the bleakness behind his eyes, he regretted leaving a man behind.

 

Regretted leaving _Duo_ behind.

 

In that moment, he regretted a lot of things.

 

Smiling at Duo, he shut the laptop, leaving off the blog post he’d been working on, the magazine article he was writing, giving Duo the attention he’d probably needed from Heero ten years ago.  Support Heero couldn’t have given him then.

 

Support he could offer now, if Duo needed it.  Wanted it.

 

“I’ve been following your blog.”

 

Heero snorted.  “I gathered.  You’ve been following my IP address too.  It’s nice to see you, Duo.”

 

He wondered, briefly, if it _was_ Duo, if the other man had changed his name after the wars, dismissed the thought.  Noticed the shorter hair, the lack of braid. Remembered when the Instagram user - Duo - had offered to give Heero his name, his casual dismissal, unwilling to reciprocate the overture.

 

Wondered if things would have been different if he’d accepted.

 

Probably.

 

Duo smiled back at him, hesitant, pained and unsure, and totally unlike the man - the boy - he’d known before, who’d had an open, ready smile completely at odds with his wartime moniker.

 

Signaling the waiter, Heero ordered food for both of them in practiced Hindi, Duo’s smile getting more relaxed, more familiar, as he watched Heero negotiate with the man.

 

They ate lunch, made small talk, Duo eating far less than Heero would have expected, given his size and what he remembered of the man’s eating habits during the war.  Though he’d been a teenage boy then, with all the hormones and appetite that went along with it.  Still, he’d not eaten half the food Heero had ordered.

 

“You weren’t hungry?”

 

Duo grimaced, shifting his eyes off to the side, unwilling to meet Heero’s direct gaze.  “Had surgery about two months ago, appetite still hasn’t quite come back.”

 

Heero looked him over, noted the circles under his eyes, the guarded way he held his left side.

 

“You were injured.”

 

Duo turned back to him with wide eyes, surprised, before he laughed.  “Haven’t missed a trick yet, have you Heero?”

 

Not many, no.  

 

“You’re still with-”

 

Duo cut him off with a sharp shake of his head.  “Not… not since the sixth.”

 

Heero filed the date away for later investigation.  Something would have happened, he was sure, to push Duo to this extreme.  To force him out of a place he’d felt obligated to, to send him scrambling halfway around the globe after Heero.

 

“Did you know who you were chasing?” he asked, suddenly curious.

 

It was Duo’s turn to snort.  “Never been more shocked in my life than when I saw you sitting here, man.  Nice hair, by the way.”

 

Heero almost lifted his hand to touch it, but stopped himself.  He’d gotten a decent barber in London, one who didn’t set his senses on high alert every time he pulled out a blade, and now he kept it longer on top, shorter on the sides, cut in a style that grew out well in case he wasn’t back regularly.  

 

Duo didn’t miss the twitch of his hand, judging by the smile on his face.

 

“What are you doing here, Duo?”

 

The other man’s shoulders slumped, more defeated than Heero had ever seen him. “I just wanted to see you.”  He took a deep breath.  “Well, not you-you.  The blogger.  The Traveler.  I didn’t know it was you.  I just.  Needed to see his face.  Your face.”

 

The words were broken, and pained, and confirmed every suspicion Heero had ever had about the man he chatted with on Instagram, about how lonely and fractured and utterly unhappy he was.

 

That it was Duo made it all the more painful.

 

“Have you been to Delhi before?”  Heero asked, finally, in the bruised silence.

 

Duo’s eyes jerked up from the bracelet on his arm he’d been fiddling with.  “Ah, no.  I- no, no I haven’t.”

 

“Want to see all the best places?”

 

Duo’s grin was a shadow of it’s former self, but it was genuine.

 

So they toured Delhi.  It was one of Heero’s favorite cities.  Huge and metropolitan, with good food and half a dozen festivals and friendly people, it was easy to like and easy to get lost in the crowd.  By the end of the day, Duo was almost back to his old self, his enthusiasm infectious, even if he still looked a bit wan and worn and he didn’t move quite as fast as Heero suspected he could.  

 

As it got darker and Duo looked progressively more exhausted, Heero finally realized that he would have to be the one to call it a day, because Duo never would.  

 

“Duo,” he said, finally, when the other man’s face was pinched and he’d reached for his side for the third time in an hour.  “It’s getting late.”

 

Heero could physically see Duo withdrawing back into himself, retreating behind a protective shell, and it was another painful thing in a day full of painful things where Duo was concerned, and Heero again felt the sting of having left a man behind enemy lines.

 

 _Never leave a man down_.

 

It wasn’t his credo, would, in fact, have been worthy of punishment if J had even suspected Heero felt that way.  But he’d lived it, had gone back and gotten Duo out of a detention cell instead of killing him, and gone and gotten him for the mission on X18999, and then he’d just gone.  

 

And left a wounded man behind, though he hadn’t known it.

 

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

 

The facade cracked, just a little, Duo smiling out at him in response to the extension of friendship.

 

They left Dehli three days later, together.

 

Duo seemed content to follow Heero in his travels, and Heero, for his part, was more than content to have someone, one of only a handful of people he could truly consider a friend, to share experiences with.

 

When Heero had left Brussels he’d taken to wandering.  At first with no sense of direction or purpose.  Just a desire to keep moving, a deeply ingrained instinct, and a wish to be anonymous.  Slowly, so slowly, it became his purpose.  His drive.  To see the world, the one he’d fought and bled for, to explore it and enjoy it and see what it had to offer.

 

The first time he’d picked up a camera for something other than surveillance had been like an epiphany.

 

His first few fumbling efforts even looked like surveillance photos.

 

It hadn’t taken him long to master the skill.  

 

Once he’d started posting them online, it hadn’t taken long for advertisers to make him an offer.  The contract to write travel guides had followed closely behind.

 

And in that way, Heero had made a life out of his nomadic lifestyle.

 

He had started, half a dozen times over the years, to contact the other pilots.  

 

And changed his mind.

 

Not because he didn’t care.  He did care.

 

He cared too much.

 

Knew himself, knew his mind, knew his own determination.  Had he known what Duo was going through - and it was clear to see from the change in his demeanor, he’d been going through a lot - he’d have thrown himself back into it head first, damn the consequences.  Despite his own commitment to peace and actions during the war, Heero wanted to walk away from it, to live his own life.

 

He had given all that he was, almost his life, to peace, and he’d been determined to experience it.

 

Not babysit.

 

Still.

 

Glancing at the long haired man beside him, noting the unfamiliar scars and jaded gaze, maybe he could have done more.

 

He’d seen Duo.  After the hospital.  After they’d given him a three page long list of damage done to his body and a prognosis of lifelong pain and disability if he ever got in a mobile suit again. After he’d vowed never to kill again.

 

And said goodbye.

 

Truthfully, he’d needed the time.  Time to find out who he was, what he wanted, needed.

 

And he’d found that.  Found freedom.  Found out who Heero Yuy _was_ , when he wasn’t a child soldier, a terrorist, or a weapon.

 

He was just a man.  A young man, in fact, with a lot of scars, who liked to eat simple food, and spend time outdoors, and hated the theatre.

 

Maybe Duo needed that same time.

 

But not alone.

 

So they travelled.   Revisited some of their favorite places.

 

Went a few neither of them had been.

 

And slowly, God, achingly slowly, some glimmer of the boy Heero had known came back.  Duo was less withdrawn, was less wary.  More open.  Smiled readily, less a bitter twist of lips and more the warm, open expression Heero remembered.

 

It turned out that Duo was also a young man who liked to spend time outdoors and eat simple food, and _loved_ the theatre, and made it more tolerable for Heero to attend, because he felt less exposed with a partner he trusted beside him.

 

Months passed.

 

Months of simple freedom and nomadic lifestyle, and healing of the physical and emotional variety.

 

Then Trowa called Duo.

 

“Quatre’s worried,” he said, simply.  He was worried, he didn’t say.  

 

Duo was careful to keep Heero out of the conversation, out of the line of sight of the vidphone.

 

“I’m good,” he answered, “better.  Happier.”

 

The blonde former pilot bustled onto the screen, Heero could just see him from the  angle he’d positioned himself at, eyeing Duo critically.  

 

“You look better,” he decided, finally, “but you shouldn’t be alone all the time.”

 

Duo cut his gaze over towards Heero, eyes crinkling around his smile.  

 

“I’m not,” he said, simply.

 

Quatre seemed to find that satisfactory, though he and Trowa both continued to text regularly.  

 

Wufei called.  Apologized.

 

Didn’t ask Duo to come back, which Heero had feared.

 

Worried that the other man would feel guilty and obligated.  Would return to the life he had obviously hated.

 

He never mentioned it.

 

They’d talked about his time in the Preventers.  Discussed old ops.  Trowa’s injury.  The final clusterfuck, as Duo had called it, that had sent him scrambling across the globe.

 

Duo didn’t talk about going back, but Heero sometimes saw an indecipherable look on his face.  A kind of longing that gave him pause.

 

It wasn't until Duo was hesitantly fingering at the edges of the threadbare denim jacket that it occurred to Heero he might be longing for something other than his old life.

 

Heero had tossed the jacket out onto the bed of their most current hotel room unthinkingly, digging for a shirt to wear. When he glanced up, Duo had the sleeve in his hand and a wistful look on his face.

 

“Did you want it back?”

 

Duo looked up, startled, dropping the jacket like it was on fire. “No- I- No.  It suits you.”

 

He turned, abruptly, for the bathroom and locked himself in.

 

When he came out, hair freshly washed and face vigorously scrubbed, a poor attempt to hide the red rimming his eyes, Heero was sitting at the desk, jacket across his lap, waiting for him.  He stood, holding the jacket out silently.

 

Duo didn’t reach for it.

 

“Nah, it’s yours anyway.  You’ve had it longer than I ever did.”  His laugh was strained.

 

Heero shrugged, laying it across the back of the chair.  “I took it because it was yours.”

 

“Yeah?  You take one of Tro’s turtlenecks too?”

 

Heero took another step forward, hovering just outside Duo’s personal space.  “No.”

 

A cocked head, a confused look.  

 

“Just the jacket.”  Heero clarified.

 

Swift inhalation, breath stuttering in his chest.  The look of longing was back in Duo’s eyes as they flicked from the jacket to Heero and back.  A bit of fear.

 

The only thing Duo Maxwell was afraid of was hoping for anything.

 

Another step forward.  

 

Heero could feel the heat from the shower radiating from Duo’s body.

 

Or maybe the heat between them.

 

Heero reached out, slowly, took Duo’s hand.

 

“I wanted more than the jacket.”

 

He tugged Duo closer, rested their foreheads together.  Waited.  Hoped.  Felt the tension slowly drain out of the other man’s shoulders.  

 

“I’m glad you found my blog,” he breathed.

 

A snorted laugh.

 

“Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to ClaraxBarton for beta reading and cheerleading this. You are lovely.


End file.
